That'll Be the Day (2007) (6 page)

Surely there must be some way to get round Sam?

The front door banged and giving a little gasp of dismay Judy was jolted from her musings. She quickly pulled on a straight black skirt and pink jumper, slipped her feet into the pointy-toed stilettos that Sam insisted she wear, and flew down the stairs.

The table was set, and, despite instructions to the contrary, Ruth had placed the pie in the centre. It looked even worse than she remembered. Tom had spilled the precious gravy on the blue checked tablecloth and Sam’s face looked like thunder. Judy reluctantly shelved the remnants of her dream and adopted a conciliatory smile.

Chapter Six

Betty had at last abandoned the sofa and was on her way back to the flower stall to help Lynda pack up for the day. Despite having a blinding headache and still feeling most peculiar, she was resolutely determined not to be bullied by Ewan Hemley as she had been in the past. And she most certainly had no intention of cooking him lunch, not this Sunday, nor at any other time. She’d done all the kow-towing to the likes of that piece of muck.

Turning the corner of the market hall Betty skidded on a cabbage leaf, partly due to the fact she was still unsteady on her feet and stopped to give Barry Holmes a piece of her mind for his untidiness. Betty Hemley may not be the tidiest person in the world herself but she hated mess in others.

Barry looked up from packing cauliflowers, deeply apologetic. ‘Sorry, love. I haven’t had a minute to sweep up today.’

‘Well, see that you do, before someone breaks their neck.’

She spotted Patsy Bowman on her way to her millinery course and paused to ask the girl how she was getting on with it.

‘It’s going great,’ Patsy said. ‘Thanks for asking, Mrs Hemley.’

What a problem Patsy had been when she’d first appeared on the market with not a good word coming out of her cheeky mouth, and now look at her. She’d transformed the Higginsons hat stall and was going steady with one of the Bertalone boys. It gave a body hope for the future to see young people turn out so well. Betty wished, not for the first time, that her own lovely Lynda would settle down and find a nice young man, if such a creature existed who could cope with the girl’s moods.

She could see Lynda now, surrounded by a glorious array of flowers, chatting away to a customer. It was worth all the pain and hard work she’d been forced to endure over the years to see her daughter smiling and happy.

But then she was confronted with the less edifying sight of her son in the grip of the local constabulary. Constable Nuttall had Jake by the collar and, seeing Betty, stopped before her with a sad shake of his head.

‘This lad of yours can’t go on like this, Betty. He’s not a nipper any more who I can clip round the ear. He’s a grown lad, nearly a man.’

Betty’s heart sank. She couldn’t take any more trouble, not today. She really couldn’t. ‘What is it this time?’

‘Nothing! I were doing nothing!’ Jake protested, as he always did.

‘I’m asking Constable Nuttall, not you, lad. Well?’

‘Aye,’ Bill Nuttall agreed. ‘She’s talking to the organ grinder not the monkey. Same as last time, Betty love: loitering with intent is the official word for it. In other words casing one of them big doctor’s houses on John Street, clearly with the intention of breaking in. If Jake and his mates didn’t have burglary on their evil little minds, then I’m a Dutchman.’

Jake snorted. ‘And I always thought you come from Bolton.’

‘Less of your lip, son. You’re in enough trouble already.’

Betty shook her head in despair. ‘What am I to do with him, Bill? He’s beyond my control, never does a thing I tell him.’

‘Nay, don’t say that, lass, or I’ll have to take him in, come what may. He could end up at one of them Borstal places. Not good.’

Jake snorted with derision. ‘Be cool, man. I’m innocent, right?’

Constable Nuttall grasped the lad’s collar tighter still, pulling him up close so that they were almost nose to nose. ‘You’re a pain in the backside lad, that’s what you are. One more clever remark and you’ll be viewing your miserable little life from the inside of a police cell. So this is what you have to do if you’re going to escape that horrible fate. Get yourself some honest employment, find some new friends, and listen to your ma. Got it?’

‘Get knotted!

‘Right, that’s it. You’re . . .’

Betty hastily intervened. ‘No, no, don’t say it, Bill, I beg you. Give him another chance, please. He’s not a bad lad, not really, just a bit mixed up.’

‘Well get him unmixed and straighten him out. Fast!’

‘I will, I will. I’ll see he gets a good talking to. He’s doing some deliveries for me at the moment so’s I can keep an eye on him. But he’s looking for a better job, aren’t you, son?’

‘Yeah, that tin can you call a van is falling apart, Ma. I’m gonna get me a job with proper wheels, and big bucks. I need to work for the kind of cool customer who appreciates my particular skills.’

‘Which are what exactly?’

Seeing Constable Nuttall’s look of disbelief, and his amusement at her son’s idiotic lingo, Betty desperately intervened before Jake could make things any worse for himself.

‘Don’t worry Bill, I’ll see he knuckles down to some real work. It won’t happen again, I swear it.’

There was a long pause while the policeman considered, long enough for the cynical smile to slide from Jake’s face.
 

Constable Nuttall scowled at the lad through narrowed eyes. ‘Don’t think for one minute that I’m letting you off the hook because I’ve gone soft. I like your mam. We go back a long way, her and me, to the war, so you can thank your lucky stars for that bit of history between us. She’s champion is our Betty. You don’t know how lucky you are to have her for a mother and you’d do well, son, to hearken to what she tells you instead of turning yourself into a character from one of them daft American filums, or it’ll be the magistrate who doles out the orders next. Got that?’

This time Jake said nothing.

‘Got it?’

He gave a mumble that might have passed for agreement.

The constable released the boy’s collar with reluctance. ‘Good. At least we’re both singing from the same song sheet now. Watch him like a hawk, Betty. He’s living on borrowed time.’ And to Jake, ‘This is your last warning, understand?’ Whereupon he left Betty to grasp her recalcitrant son by the ear and after giving him a furious shake, drag him off home, oblivious to his loud protests.

Chuckling to himself Constable Bill hooked his thumbs in his breast pockets and went about his business, content that he’d dealt with the matter fairly but firmly. Whether young Jake was capable of turning over a new leaf was really up to him. Only time would tell. But he’d be watching and waiting, just in case he didn’t.

Later that same evening Betty was still worrying over the problem of her ex-husband when Lynda came sailing in, her pretty face wreathed in smiles and the kind of bounce to her walk that warmed Betty’s heart.

‘Had a good time, love?’

‘Not bad, not bad at all. Terry is really quite sweet when he gets over his shyness, but how about you? Are you feeling any better? I feel awful leaving you here all on your tod all evening.’

‘I wasn’t on me tod. Queenie has kept me company.’ Betty indicated the cat, curled peacefully on her lap and purring like a small motor.

Lynda came to sit next to her mother, enveloping her in a big hug. ‘How do you feel now?’

‘All the better for seeing you. I’ll put t’kettle on and make us a nice cuppa.’

‘No, you stay right where you are. I’ll do the honours tonight. We don’t want to disturb Queenie unnecessarily.’ Lynda tickled the cat, chuckling as it stretched out its chin for more petting. ‘Or would you prefer cocoa?’

‘Eeh, that’d be grand.’

Mother and daughter were sitting contentedly together sipping steaming hot cocoa and nibbling Garibaldi biscuits, Lynda idly chatting about the dance and catching up on gossip when she suddenly spotted the roses lying on the floor under the table. Jumping to her feet she went to pick them up.

‘What are these doing here? These must be the yellow roses I sold to that tall untidy sort of bloke. Why have you got them? And what are they doing under our table, all wilted?’

Betty felt a roaring in her ears. Dear heaven, why hadn’t she remembered chucking the roses on the table and seeing them fall? Now what could she say? If she told Lynda the truth about who the stranger really was, she might get all excited and want to see him. She’d certainly want to know why her father had called after all this time, what he wanted, and if he was coming again. Oh, it could all get very tricky.

‘He was an old friend who decided to look me up,’ Betty fabricated. ‘Haven’t seen him since he was billeted in Manchester during the war.’

‘Really? Do I know him? I thought there was something familiar about him.’

‘No, love, I don’t see why you would know him.’ Betty crossed her fingers and sent up a silent prayer for forgiveness over her deception.

Lynda was frowning. ‘But that doesn’t explain why the roses were on the floor?’

Betty could feel the colour rising in her cheeks as she avoided Lynda’s penetrating gaze. ‘I think I must have come over all funny peculiar again. It was the surprise at seeing him after all these years, I suppose. We got talking about old times and I clean forgot all about them. I didn’t much care for him being here, to tell the truth, so got rid of him as fast as I could. Then I forgot about them.’

‘Even so, it’s not like you to treat flowers so badly. Are you still feeling peculiar? Do you need a doctor?’

‘No, course I don’t. I’m fine and dandy.’

Betty was saved from further questioning by the arrival of her son. Jake flung himself into the small house rather like a tornado might blast its way through town, scattering jacket, shoes and Slim-Jim tie before slumping in a chair and propping his stockinged feet up on the fender. There was a hole in one toe, Betty noticed, making a mental note to darn it.

‘I’ll have one of those if you haven’t supped the pot dry,’ he said, issuing the statement rather like a command.

‘It’s cocoa, not tea, and you can get it yourself,’ Lynda tartly informed her brother. ‘I’m off to bed. You too, Mam, you look all in and I don’t want you waiting on this useless layabout. I know what you’re like, you’ll be buttering bread and making him chip butties at midnight if I don’t watch you.’

‘He’s my son, who else would look after him if I don’t?’

‘Who indeed?’ Lynda dryly remarked, and returning her gaze to her young brother asked what he’d been up to that evening.

‘Nowt!’

‘That doesn’t sound very likely, knowing you.’

‘Cut the gas, you’re allus getting at me,’ Jake protested.

‘And you can cut this stupid hot rod slang. I hate it, and you don’t even have a car.’

Jake smirked. ‘I’m working on that, and me mates certainly do. We’ve been burning rubber down on the rec. I’m not a kid you can boss about any more. I’m nineteen for goodness sake, so lay off, will you?’

‘Someone has to look out for you.’

‘I don’t need two mothers, ta very much.’

Betty only half listened to their banter, with which she was all too familiar. Jake had always been a worry to her and she feared that he never would free himself of the bad company he’d got himself tied up with. But she’d done her best and he didn’t take kindly to her continued fussing, as he called it. Sometimes her nagging made him worse, not better. He’d suffered badly from not having a father around, a steady hand to guide him. Not that Ewan could ever be accused of having one of those.

Jake had just turned five when they’d separated back in 1943. As a small boy he’d worshipped his dad and felt his loss keenly, sometimes shouting at Betty in a childish temper that it was all her fault for making his daddy leave. She rather thought he still blamed her to this day. Betty remembered him clinging to a grubby bit of blanket for years, stuffing it in his mouth whenever he went to sleep.

As he got older he’d grown boisterous and aggressive, insisting that he was the man of the house and could do as he pleased. And there was a period as an adolescent when he’d become obsessed with wanting to know where Ewan was, had kept on asking questions and somehow turned against her even more when she couldn’t supply the answers he wanted.

‘Are you sure you’re all right, Mam?’

Betty came out of her reverie with a jerk, finding Lynda studying her with concern. ‘Sorry, I was miles away. What were you saying, love?’

‘That you still look a bit peaky to me. There’s nothing else worrying you, is there, Mam?’

‘Why would there be?’ Betty was on her feet in a second, anxious to avoid too close an inspection from her daughter. ‘You’re right though, I am tired, so I’m off up them apples and pears to me bed. You youngsters see you lock up properly, back and front.’

‘Don’t worry. Jake can do that while I put these roses in water, then I’ll be up myself,’ Lynda said.

The decision seemed to have been made. One look at her troubled son and Betty just didn’t have the heart to tell him that only hours before his father had occupied that very same chair. Nor did she have the energy for that ‘little talk’ she’d promised Constable Nuttall she’d give her erring son. Tomorrow was soon enough. She’d had just about enough for one day.